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Kindred Spirits Complete	By : RedelliaValentinos Category: +1 through F > Danny Phantom Views: 507 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I don't own Danny Phantom, I don't own any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from writing this story, I write this purely for the enjoyment of writing. It's just me and a keyboard and my wild brain.

Chapter List
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- 26
"Vlad! It's been so long! How have you been?" Maddie opens up. Eager to converse with him as an old friend, he figures.
He turns to them once he's sure Danny is out of sight and sound, intending to glare. With the power of a thousand suns, preferably. But instead, his eyes fall behind them. To the portal. It's currently shut down, and on the wall next to its entrance, an alarm is sounding. The ecto-filtration unit. He's not surprised they've forgotten to empty it. But that's not the only thing he sees. Inside the portal bay, on the floor, there's an ugly black scorch mark that trails up the wall.
He's here to yell at them. To rip them apart. He's been having imaginary conversations in his head for weeks. He hadn't actually settled on how he wanted to start berating them. He initially figured he'd just wing it. But now, as his feet take him past the Fentons and into the portal bay, something stirs inside of him. A new and strange beast that he didn't even know existed.
"Vlad?" Jack calls.
The halfa hears him. But he doesn't respond. Instead, he squats down before the black burn that has altered the metal slightly. He hesitantly lays shaking fingers against the floor. Soot stains his skin. He can feel the deposits gritting into his pads, working their way into his fingerprints. There's a jolt of energy that runs through him, a small one. It's simply an impression. An echo leftover from the accident. For a brief moment, his body burns at the feeling. Rather severely, almost as though he's taking the charge himself. But it's just a death impression. A manifestation of the shift of energy that altered the course of a life. Had Danny simply died, the energy wouldn't be here, and he'd likely be trapped in his death state. And though being an eternal entity is a terrible fate, being trapped in a death state is worse than death itself.
He stands slowly, following the burn up the wall...to a small panel that's barely waist height against him. A simple panel with two buttons. One red, one green, and the green bears the darkest burn. It's plastic is even partially melted. Vlad gulps.
'This is where it happened.'
Jack comes up to him, standing just a few feet away and looking over his shoulder.
'And you allowed it to.'
"Yeah, we're not really sure what happened here. We just found it. Whatever happened, it got the portal working."
Vlad's lip twitches and his fingers curl inward.
"And thank god, too, otherwise we'd have t-"
Vlad rears his fist back and swings as hard as he can...and lays Jack Fenton out across the portal bay floor.
He doesn't register the pain in his knuckles, what little there is. And it's healed almost as quickly as his fist had been thrown. Vlad stares down at the man he's just knocked unconscious. Maddie is frozen in place, hands plastered over her mouth in shock, and he can hear her heartbeat. He can sense her fear. And her disbelief, as her eyes have fallen on her husband.
"Do you know why your portal works?" Vlad tilts his head in her direction, "Madeline?"
He steps over Jack and out of the bay, approaching her calmly.
Maddie tries to move around him, to get her husband, but he throws his arm up to stop her. ''No, no, no, no, no,'' he nudges her backward with a firm hand on her shoulder, towards a stool, "He's built like an ox. He'll be fine. Sit."
Maddie does, however reluctantly, and shaking like a leaf in a hurricane.
Vlad leans against the table and remains silent, letting her stew in her panic for a few minutes. He waits until she's coiled into a metaphorical spring of her anxiety and fear for her safety.
"I want to yell at you."
She tenses slightly.
"I want to scream."
Her fingers curl into her thighs.
"I want to tear you limb from limb. ...But I can't. Because, among other reasons, It will do Daniel no good if I do so. So you are going to sit and listen." In reality, said reason is currently tied for first place with 'But I can't because Daniel will hear it.'
As it is, he can hear every muscle in her body seizing.
"So, I will ask again. Do you know why your portal works?"
And she shakes her head back and forth vigorously, fighting the urge to get her husband up off the floor because she knows Vlad will stop her.
"Your portal works because Daniel's body completed the circuit." He doesn't look at her when he says it. He doesn't want to. He can imagine her face.
"That charring that you are too dense to recognize is from your son being electrocuted."
He hears a faint whimper. He presses on.
"I don't know how you two could possibly forget about a bunch of paramedics hauling a smoking child out of your house. I'd like to think it might have been traumatic enough of a sight that your minds just cut the memory out. But even that doesn't quite cover it. And it certainly doesn't excuse everything else."
He can feel a shift in her energy. She's pulling back in towards herself. Be it for comfort or to search for the day in question, he doesn't really care.
"I am..." he heaves a strained breath, "I am the last person on this world that should be judging someone else's parenting. But, I think on this matter, I will pass judgment."
"Vlad..." Maddie nearly whispers.
"You have failed. Both of you. In fact, you've failed so spectacularly that when I showed up to the hospital, your daughter, who had never even met me before, just caved right in and relinquished control to me."
Not entirely the truth, Jasmine required some prompting. But Vlad decides she doesn't need to know.
"Children are raised to question and avoid strangers. And Jasmine did neither, she was so tired. She didn't even bother to call her mother and ask who the stranger was."
Maddie's paper-thin resolve starts to crumble around the edges.
"Children are generally attached at the hip to at least one parent. Which tells me that the home life is so chaotic that she feels she can't depend on you as her mother. She's doing things herself. She's handling the basic day-to-day tasks. She's handling the phone calls. She's handling the aftermath of you two going on a hunting trip. She's learning to be an adult when she should be chasing companions. And I haven't even gotten to your second born, yet."
He finally looks at her, and Maddie is...quiet. And has wrapped her arms around her torso. She's probably ready for him to stop.
"I don't doubt that you love your children. But, lets face it, it's as though you and Jack never left college. You still act like kids. You allow yourselves to get lost in your research, and in the process, you go blind to the needs of your children."
She's shutting down. Or, at least, she's trying to.
"As for Daniel..." he sees her flinch out of the corner of his eye, "Perhaps it's due to my not being the only one to be injured by something you and Jack built, perhaps it's because Daniel was far worse off in his injuries... Either way, his situation upsets me even more. My recovery was miserable. But the mercy was being awake and aware. Daniel was comatose for two and a half months. And when he finally woke, his first two questions were 'Where am I?' and 'Where is my mother?'"
Vlad can hear her heart in her chest, beating in over time. He can sense her state, fragile and on the brink of collapse. He knows he's hitting her with a lot, and all at once, no less. But he can also feel himself becoming less and less attached to Maddie as a whole. His memories are fond but fading. The pictures are yellowing and crinkling in a corner of his brain.
"Now, due to his coma, Daniel has missed quite a bit of school. Enough that he'll need to take a summer course, or he'll repeat a grade. To avoid the public humiliation he'll suffer for repetition, I've already enrolled him in a summer program. Given the tendency towards discord in this house, he will be staying with me, and I will provide his lessons."
"Wait, you're...taking him for the summer?" Her first words in quite some time.
"Yes. He's been through enough. I'll be staying in town until he's back to school. You have until then to straighten yourselves out. I'd prefer to take him into my custody. But as I've said, he's already been through enough, and the court process would be torture. I'm not above tampering with the minds of others. But I draw the line at Daniel. If, however, I feel that no effort or not enough effort has been made on your part, then I will get the state involved."
Maddie seems to soften. Just a little. "Can I..." she wipes at her nose, "Can I visit him?"
Vlad tilts his head in thought. Genuinely. He wants to tell her no. The bitter, frustrated parts of him, anyway. On the other hand, the question means she's not going to fight him. She could. But she won't. On the surface, it seems he's gotten through to her and triggered some instincts that have been dormant for a long time. The recognition that, for Danny's own sake, she has to let Vlad intervene. The awareness that what she's doing isn't working. Then, strangely, a thought niggles at his mind. And Vlad wonders if she didn't actually forget about her child. He wonders if she knew he was out of the house, and was just pretending everything was fine to make it easier on herself. But if that were the case, then how could Jack not notice? Or was Jack in on the delusion? Or, was she lying to her husband to save face?
Somehow, though, in considering the possibilities, and her reactions, Vlad suspects she and Jack both simply forgot. Whatever the reason, it's the most absurd case of Forgotten Child Syndrome he's ever heard of.
"I'll leave my address with Jasmine," he replies softly, "Do with it what you will."
-
By the time he comes back upstairs, Jasmine has cleared the kitchen table and laid out all of the dishes in stacks. Plates and bowl and cups and silverware, all in their own little piles. To him, looking at the arrangement, the organization is a coping mechanism due to it's time consumption. The girl has scrubbed the sink itself clean and is currently rinsing the cleaner and suds down the drain with the sprayer. She doesn't turn to acknowledge him.
"I expected a raging fit from you," her tone gentle.
"It would have been a waste of perfectly good oxygen."
"Mm." She turns the water off, "Danny's upstairs in his room."
He gives a nod in thanks. "I've informed your mother that I'll be keeping him for the summer to get him through the course. She has until the school year begins to get herself in order."
"What about dad?" She dries her hands off on a towel.
Vlad winces. "He'll need to be informed...when he wakes up."
She turns then, looking at him with a raised brow. "Lecture him to sleep, did you?"
"Uh, no, I hit him."
The towel hits the table with a soft whack and Jasmine is caught between wanting to congratulate the halfa and wanting to lecture him herself. She's always sensed that he's stuffed some of his darker urges into a bottle. She knows he's capable of doing great harm. Even without having seen his other form. But seeing Danny's ghost form and the ice that randomly manifested for half of May told her enough. And the contents of their trip into the Ghost Zone has been purposefully kept out of conversations. All things considered, her father got off pretty easy.
"I suppose it was due," she finally responds and starts gathering the silverware up, "last room at the end of the hall. Ignore the holes."
Vlad gives another nod, scribbles onto a piece of paper and sticks it on the refrigerator door. He doesn't pry any further. For the moment, there's no more words they need to exchange. He leaves her to the mess and ascends the stairwell just as he hears Maddie come up from the basement.
Down at the end of the hall, he sees Danny's door. A poster of the earth viewed from the moon covers the bulk of the wood. Closer inspection reveals it's scuffed and old. Light shines through a few random spots behind the paper. He huffs at that before he knocks.
''It doesn't lock,'' resounds from the other side, eminating exhaustion.
Vlad turns the knob, hearing a few parts inside grind and snap lightly, and opens it. Stepping inside, the older halfa looks around and studies the room. His eyes glance at the ceiling, where he sees little stars stuck to it, glowing faintly. Some of them are stuck onto little randomly sized squares of duct tape. He suspects, based on the living room downstairs and the bedroom door, that it was done to cover up holes and make the most of a situation.
The room is well furnished, if a little cramped for his own preferances. The bed, which Danny is presently sitting on while he rifles through a booklet of CD's, is not made. It's a tangled mess of blankets and sheets, but it looks comfortable. There's a desk with a computer that's currently shut down, and the dresser has a few articles of clothing hanging out of mostly closed drawers. The walls are lined with different posters, some for space, others for movies he's never seen. But while the room is well used, lived in and almost crowded, there's a distinct lack of random little keepsakes and tchotchkes. There's no knick-knacks or any special little items placed on shelves or the dresser. The only thing that stands apart to further support that it's Danny's room he's standing in is a telescope by the window.
Danny seems intent on just shriveling in on himself out of habit, and Vlad watches him put the CD binder down and reach under his bed. He pulls out a box and starts sifting through it. And there Vlad sees what's missing. The little mementos that would open a window into Danny's personality are carefully tucked into that box. Where they're safe. Safe from misfires and random shots. Safe from the two hundred pound lummox he's knocked out in the basement, that he knows has a habit of just barreling through everything in his path.
''Daniel?''
Danny grunts and keeps going through his box, clearly searching for something.
Vlad bites back a sigh, he's huffed enough excess air for today, and quietly comes around to him. He gently takes the box away and places it next to the boy on the bed. Danny blinks at it for a few moments. Vlad can see the teenager he's slowly coming to know peering through the veil behind foggy irises. But survival mode has caused him to surpress and pack himself away in favor of just getting through the day-to-day chaos. Just as he's packed all of his keepsakes into a box and keeps them shoved under the bed where they won't be destroyed. Vlad eyes the various little baubles and trinkets and feels like he's looking directly at Danny's brain. Even in his room, there's no safe zone. Anything and everything precious is tucked away.
''Daniel,'' he says again, gentle, not wanting to startle him.
Danny looks at him with those clouded eyes.
''I want you to pack a bag. Bring whatever you like. You're going to be with me a little longer. Just until you're through the summer course. I have a property in Polter Heights, that's where we'll be staying.''
There's a little spark in the younger halfa's eyes, suddenly.
''Can I see my friends? Sam's house is in that neighborhood.'' he asks, voice soft and shy.
Vlad smiles. ''Of course. Just remember, you'll have to keep up with your work.''
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- 26
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Kindred Spirits Complete